As I just moved to Vienna's 9th district (Alsergrund) I decided to explore the area of the "University Center Althanstraße" encompassing the now vacant Business University buildings, the Institute of Ecology (where I studied, amongst others), as well as the Geology and Pharmacy Institutes.

I am happy about this initiative and am curious to see how we are going to walk, converse and vision about what this whole building complex can turn into in future.

The talk will take place Monday 28th April at 6 PM at Vienna University of Technology. There will be live streaming within the university and the video recording of the talk will be put on line later, also within this post. ;) Looking forward to interacting with many interested students in Vienna!

Last year, departure, the creative agency of the City if Vienna launched a series of ideas competitions to bring forward creative ideas for urban innovation in Vienna and beyond. The 2013 issue of the ideas competition - Cycling Affairs - received more that 200 submissions. With this year’s ideas competition departure launches a project that provides participants with the opportunity to reflect on what the brief calls a "solidarity city" - City Hype - invites creative professionals and city enthusiasts to formulate their ideas for coexistence on an equal footing, to provide the city with a multifaceted, modern identity and to actively participate in shaping its future.

The ideas competition is open for individuals, start-ups or collectives from various disciplines located in Vienna or internationally. The submission of multiple entries is possible. Please find the registration form here.

To steer inspiration for first ideas of potential participants the team of departure came up with core areas and specific questions as relevant to the overall theme of the competition. These questions can be taken as points of departure for working on the ideas competition: THE SOLIDARITY CITYWhich measures focus on justice and solidarity as basic prerequisites for the
social interactions of the city dwellers?THE NETWORKED CITYHow do technologies react to the requirements of a network society, to its high
degree of innovative dynamism and advancing digitalization?THE FLEXIBLE CITYHow can the requirements imposed by the revolution of the working environment be turned into practice and which new models for work, leisure time and
life planning are imaginable?THE OPEN CITYWhere is room for actively participating in the creation of communicative locations and how can we succeed in making the city a modern ‘place of action’ for
all its inhabitants?THE INTELLIGENT CITYWhich sustainable solutions can be developed for the future of a ‘smart city’ in
terms of infrastructure, distribution and organization?THE DETERMINED CITYWhat are the tools and strategies required to meet both the needs of individuals and the challenges of the 21st century in a creative way and which lead to
personal initiative for the benefit of the civil society?

The competition's expert jury will be analysing the
submitted projects according to the following criteria:

• Creative quality

• Sustainability

• Potential for change

• Potential for activation

• Added value for the civil society

There are three jury prizes for the competition:

prize: EUR 7,000

prize: EUR 5,000

prize: EUR 2,500

As well as one "Public’s choice award" which will
be awarded by a public vote and which will win € 3,000.

The timeline for the competition is as following:

Launch of ideas competition: April 15, 2014

Deadline for submissions: June 18, 2014

Public voting (for "Public Choice Award"): June 27
– July 20, 2014

Jury meeting (For defining three jury prizes.): August 2014

Award ceremony: September 2014

Read more about the ideas competition here and fond an
English description here.

We are gladly launching Smarter Than Car as a Think Tank engaged with questions of Bicycle Urbanism and Future Urban Mobility.

See our new beautiful website:

As an open-source Think Tank we reagulary host events bringing together people to discuss ideas and brew up projects. We are also preparing some projects for the upcoming months so keep an eye out on the new website. I will also keep some updates on flolo.org.

I recently gave a talk at the TEDx Vienna City 2.0 event. Running through this process and meeting the inspiring team and other speakers made me learn a lot. Thanks to everybody who supported me in preparing the talk and of course to the whole team at Smarter Than Car! :)

Here is the video.

"The mainstreamed bicycle as a tool for creating future cities is
just starting to take-off. Can we imagine a city where the benchmark for
successful urban development is how we are able to use pedal-powered
vehicles?
The idea of such a bicycle urbanism is what Florian is
working on with the Chinese-Austrian NGO Smarter Than Car. He will make
you understand why the bicycle is the most effective way to restructure
our cities to become fit for future urban challenges.
Florian explains
why he believes that the bicycle is still massively under-explored in
contemporary urban planning and administration. He shows examples of
what we can learn from bicycle cultural exchange with a city like
Beijing to re-think our cities along the lines of pop-up urbanism on two
or three wheels."